Digital Commons Network^™

An Analysis Of The Perceptions Of The Legal Profession Through The Eyes Of Dissatisfied Consumers Of Legal Services In Manhattan, Ny: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Caprice A. Alves

Education Doctoral

In the past, research on consumer dissatisfaction with legal services tended to be quantitative in nature, and focused primarily on consumer opinion of the legal profession. These quantitative studies have been valuable in gaining a basic understanding of consumer consensus of legal services and the legal profession. However, a qualitative understanding of the complexity of the personal dissatisfaction experience with legal services, as well as the psychological and social meanings and consequences of these experiences, is an important contribution to the literature. This dissertation provides a qualitative view of the experience of consumer dissatisfaction with legal services in Manhattan, NY. …

Investigation Of Recycled Paper Deinking Mechanisms, Veronika Husovska

Dissertations

The use of water-based inks is on the rise. Sub-micron pigment particles are used for flexographic and inkjet water-based inks. Conventional deinking eliminates larger particles than those from these new ink systems. Therefore, water-based inks represent recycling difficulty.

Deinking experiments of water-based inks are carried out. The deinking strategy initially investigated elimination of pressure sensitive adhesive due to similar acrylic polymer chemistry used in water based inks. The impact of pH on stickies and ink agglomeration during deinking is studied. Experiments in acidic regions show growth of acrylic inks and stickies agglomerates, simplifying elimination.

Pre-recycling of water-based inks is explored. …

Mixed Methods Analysis Of Counselor Views, Attitudes And Perceived Competencies Regarding The Treatment Of Internet Pornography Addiction, Bradly K. Hinman

Dissertations

The Internet offers unprecedented opportunity for individuals to have anonymous, inexpensive, and unrestricted access to an essentially unlimited range of sexually explicit materials. Counseling clients are increasingly presenting with problematic issues regarding Internet pornography use. The purposes of this mixed-method study were (a) to examine the current status of counselors’ attitudes and self-efficacy about treating clients with Internet pornography addiction, and (b) to ascertain the opinions of counselor educators who are experts in the field of Internet pornography addiction on the current status of counselor training and best practices for preparing counselors.

The quantitative data was obtained from a 90-item …

Simo: Modeling And Measuring The Relationships Between Strategy, It/Mission Alignment Maturity And Nonprofit Organizational Outcomes, Kelly Ann Trusty

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to adapt Croteau and Bergeron’s (2001) Information Technology Trilogy model and Luftman’s (2000) Strategic Alignment Maturity Model to the nonprofit sector and (2) to combine the adapted models with Miles and Snow’s (1978) strategy typology model and organizational performance measures based on McLaughlin and Jordan’s (2010) logic model to test a proposed model that examines the relationships between strategy typology, IT alignment maturity and organizational performance in nonprofit organizations. A cross-sectional survey design was implemented. One thousand, eight hundred and six organizations that had received grants from Indiana Community Foundations between 2009 …

Writing The Wrongs: How Gay And Lesbian Playwrights Use The Paranormal In Autobiographical Writing, George William Zorn

Dissertations

Playwrights have been using ghost and spirit-characters in stage works since the classical era. From their beginnings as speechless, vengeful catalysts and informational narrators, the ghost-character has evolved to something that would not be recognizable to Greek playwrights. This is no more evident than in the works of contemporary gay and lesbian dramatists. Examining the selected works of playwrights Claudia Allen, Larry Kramer and Victor Bumbalo will illuminate the use of ghosts and the paranormal by these playwrights as a way to overcome personal trauma by either creating closure with autobiographical scenes or by using the absence of these characters …

Diagnosis And Acute Management Of Patients With Concussion At Children's Hospitals., Jeffrey D. Colvin, Cary Thurm, Brian M. Pate, Jason G. Newland, Matt Hall, William P. Meehan Iii

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Objectives: To describe the number of hospital admissions for concussion at paediatric hospitals in the USA. To describe the use of imaging and medications for acute concussion paediatric patients.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Children's hospitals participating in the Pediatric Health Information System in the USA during a 10-year period.

Patients: All emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient admissions with the primary diagnosis of concussion, defined as International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification codes for: (1) concussion, (2) postconcussion syndrome or (3) skull fracture without mention of intracranial injury with concussion.

Main outcome measures: The proportion of concussion patients …

Diversity May Be Justified, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of Those In The U.S. Deaf Community About Reading And Writing Asl, Jennifer Keogh

Theses and Dissertations

On average, students who are deaf do not develop English literacy skills as well as their hearing peers. The linguistic interdependence principle suggests that literacy in American Sign Language (ASL) may improve literacy in English for students who are deaf. However, the Deaf community in the United States has not widely adopted a written form of ASL. This research surveys individuals in the U.S. Deaf community to better understand the opinions surrounding literacy in ASL.

The survey was presented online, containing both ASL in embedded videos and written English. The survey asked for the participants' demographic information, language and educational …

Evaluation Of Alternate Mouthpiece Material Types To Minimize Vibrations And Heat Loss - The Research And Execution Of Prototypes, Kristen Bobuk

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This paper is based on the idea of current horn mouthpieces being made solely out of brass with a limited market of stainless steel and titanium with plating being silver or gold. This is an opportunity to explore alternate materials; specifically steel, cast iron and aluminum for the base material and chrome, copper and nickel for plating materials. Readers will learn about metal properties such as hardness, thermal conductivity and specific heat and learn why certain materials are more beneficial than others.

Proximity-Labeling Of Near Neighbors Of Lamin A And Lamin A-Δ50 (Progerin)., Mohammad Sabri

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In an attempt to isolate and identify proteins that differentially interact with or locate near lamin A and progerin, we used a previously described method named BioID (proximity-dependent biotin identification). This method is based on fusion of a promiscuous E. coli biotin-protein ligase (BL) to a targeting protein (in this study, lamin A-GFP and progerin-GFP). The biotin ligase biotinylates amino residues in proteins that are near-neighbors of the fusion protein. To create the fusion proteins, BL was sub-cloned from a pcDNA3.1 MCS-BirA(R118G)-HA plasmid donated by Kyle Roux from University of South Dakota. The BL fragment was ligated into a pNEBR-X1-lamin …

Oval Office., Joshua F. Houser

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Oval Office is the most iconic room in the White House and one of the most recognizable interiors in the United States. I have recreated the Oval Office as a three-dimensional, interactive environment for the purpose of studying 3D modeling, texturing, and environment creation. My recreation of the Oval Office contains more than 30 unique models which use over 100 high-quality texture maps. My goal was to study the creation of both organic and hard surface models as well as learning which workflows were best suited to each object within a scene. I also wanted to study how different …

Creativity For Sale, Nicole E. Marshall

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project focuses on a business plan and template for developing proposals for potential clients. This covers the history of Creative Problem Solving (CPS); the effectiveness of CPS training; an example design of a workshop; business plan; memorandum of understanding; contract; and a template for fees. This project will add to the richness of the department, and create opportunities for our faculty, alumni, and current students to consult while spreading the CPS process and creativity around the world.

Happenings@Hannon, December 2013, William H. Hannon Library

Happenings @ Hannon

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Online Social Presence: An Overview Of Social Presence Assessment, Guoqiang Cui

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

As an important variable in online learning environment, the construct of social presence has been widely studied by researchers in order to investigate students’ online communication behavior and their related performance. This study will provide an overview of the assessment of social presence throughout its historical development. In this review, both primary subjective and objectives measures of social presence will be introduced, followed by criticisms towards current social presence measures, and offer recommendations for future development of social presence measurement tools.

The Importance Of Mapping To The Next Generation Retinal Prosthesis, Jonathan Gesell

Student Work

Evolutionarily, human beings have come to rely on vision more than any other sense, and with the prevalence of visual-oriented stimuli and the necessity of computers and visual media in everyday activities, this can be problematic. Therefore, the development of an accurate and fast retinal prosthesis to restore the lost portions of the visual field for those with specific types of vision loss is vital, but current methodologies are extremely limited in scope. All current models use a spatio-temporal filter (ST), which uses a difference of Gaussian (DOG) to mimic the inner layers of the retina and a noisy leak …

A Critical Examination Of Green Economic Development As A Post-Disaster Recovery Approach: The Case Of Greensburg, Kansas 2007-2012, David Edgardo Leiva

Master's Theses

In May 2007, an EF-5 tornado ripped through and annihilated 95% of Greensburg, Kansas, a town of about 1,500 people in the southwestern portion of the state. On the heels of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina federal response and with the promise of two sitting presidents to use all of the federal support available, the town vowed not only to "survive, but thrive." Months later, Greensburg civic, business and elected leaders - with a host of external expertise - unveiled a recovery plan that not only set in motion the rebuilding of the two-square mile town but also offered the opportunity …

Variations Of Vibrio Populations In Pacific White Shrimp, Litopenaeus Vannamei, Aquaculture Raceways, Tracy Rene Berutti

Master's Theses

Reducing incidence of vibrioses in intensive aquaculture systems is essential to maintaining yields. This study performed real-time qPCR (quantitative polymerase chain reaction) using primers targeting 16s rDNA sequences for total bacteria, the Vibrio genus, and Vibrio parahaemolyticus in aquaculture tanks over the growing season. Total DNA concentrations in each sample were measured with a NanoDrop 2000 Spectrophotometer (Thermo Scientific, Inc. USA). These data were compared to two levels of bio-floc solids removal in addition to physical and chemical tank parameters such as temperature, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate. The total bacteria gene copy abundances were higher (p = 0.0081) …

Synthesis And Study Of Stimuli-Responsive Fluorescent Polymeric Thin Films For Early Corrosion Detection By Directly Monitoring Iron Dissolution From Steel Substrates, Kevin William Harman

Master's Theses

The successful measurement and prediction of material lifetimes is of high importance for proper maintenance on metal infrastructures for prevention of asset loss through corrosive processes. Current testing protocols include mismatched accelerated weathering techniques in combination with visual corrosion detection that consume substantial amounts of time and resources and often lead to inaccurate extrapolation to natural conditions. For corrosion science and engineering to evolve further, accurate and early detection methods of efficiently evaluating materials are necessary. Fluorescence spectroscopy is one established non-destructive analytical technique that is highly sensitive and selective to a variety of metal ion species and chemical environments …

An Examination Of Media Accounts Before And After School Shootings: A Content Analysis Of Newspaper Articles Pertaining To Firearms On Campus, John Ronald Harrington

Master's Theses

Very few topics elicit such polarizing responses as that of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Since our country's infancy, firearms have been an integral part of our society. Over the years firearms have undoubtedly become ingrained in the American culture, but their presence has not been unanimously welcomed. While many Americans stand firmly by their right to bear arms, others adamantly oppose the notion that civilians should be able to possess such firearm s. This study explores the current literature regarding firearms, concealed carry firearms, and the news media's portrayal of concealed carry firearms on school campuses. …

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Measures Of Service Quality And Satisfaction Of Golf Spectators In A Korean Ladies' Professional Golf Association Tournament, Jaemon Sun

Master's Theses

A variety of spectator sports, leisure activities, and internet media developments have changed the sport market environment into a serious global competition. In this sport market environment, it is necessary to execute customer satisfaction management to meet the wants and needs of sport spectators. Understanding which service quality factors best predict customer satisfaction is an important issue in the sport events industry. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction for spectators in attendance at a Korea Ladies' Professional Golf Association Tournament event. A secondary purpose of the study was to …

Query-Document-Dependent Fusion: A Case Study Of Multimodal Music Retrieval, Zhonghua Li, Bingjun Zhang, Yi Yu, Jialie Shen, Ye Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, multimodal fusion has emerged as a promising technology for effective multimedia retrieval. Developing the optimal fusion strategy for different modality (e.g. content, metadata) has been the subject of intensive research. Given a query, existing methods derive a unified fusion strategy for all documents with the underlying assumption that the relative significance of a modality remains the same across all documents. However, this assumption is often invalid. We thus propose a general multimodal fusion framework, query-document-dependent fusion (QDDF), which derives the optimal fusion strategy for each query-document pair via intelligent content analysis of both queries and documents. By …

Modeling Temporal Adoptions Using Dynamic Matrix Factorization, Freddy Chong-Tat Chua, Richard Jayadi Oentaryo, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The problem of recommending items to users is relevant to many applications and the problem has often been solved using methods developed from Collaborative Filtering (CF). Collaborative Filtering model-based methods such as Matrix Factorization have been shown to produce good results for static rating-type data, but have not been applied to time-stamped item adoption data. In this paper, we adopted a Dynamic Matrix Factorization (DMF) technique to derive different temporal factorization models that can predict missing adoptions at different time steps in the users' adoption history. This DMF technique is an extension of the Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) based on …

Effects Of Messages Emphasizing Environmental Determinants Of Obesity On Intentions To Engage In Diet And Exercise Behaviors, Jeff Niederdeppe, Sungjong Roh, Michael A. Shapiro, Hye Kyung Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Reducing rates of obesity will require interventions that influence both individual decisions and environmental factors through changes in public policy. Previous work indicates that messages emphasizing environmental determinants increases support for public policies, but some suspect this strategy may undermine motivation to engage in diet and exercise. Emphasizing factors outside of personal control appears to enhance rather than undermine motivations to engage in healthy diet and exercise behavior.

Dynamic Joint Sentiment-Topic Mode, Yulan He, Chenghua Lin, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social media data are produced continuously by a large and uncontrolled number of users. The dynamic nature of such data requires the sentiment and topic analysis model to be also dynamically updated, capturing the most recent language use of sentiments and topics in text. We propose a dynamic Joint Sentiment-Topic model (dJST) which allows the detection and tracking of views of current and recurrent interests and shifts in topic and sentiment. Both topic and sentiment dynamics are captured by assuming that the current sentiment-topic-specific word distributions are generated according to the word distributions at previous epochs. We study three different …

Social Media Hype In Times Of Crises: Nature, Characteristics And Impact On Organizations, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article extends Vasterman’s (2005) concept of media hype by analyzing how it applies in the social media context. It then develops the concept of social media hype, its nature, characteristics through examination of five cases that attracted much social media attention. Social media hype can be defined as a netizen-generated hype that causes huge interest that is triggered by a key event and sustained by a self-reinforcing quality in its ability for users to engage in conversation. It involves a trigger event, followed by interest waves, and sustaining of the interests on different social media platforms. In response, organizations …

E-Museletter: December 2013, Suzanne Corriell

Museletter

This Issue:

Quiet, Please!

Fall 2013 Staffed Library Hours

Exam Reminders

Featured Law Librarian [Mei Kiu Lo]

New Displays

Suggestions Welcome

Psychosocial And Environmental Determinants Of Physical Activity In Elementary School Children : Implications For Interventions To Reduce Childhood Obesity., Jiying Ling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Childhood obesity has become a national public health crisis in America. Physical activity has been shown to be one key for controlling childhood obesity, but little is known about the mediators and moderators in physical activity promotion models. In particular, the immediate time afterschool provides an important opportunity for children to be active, only 20% of their afterschool time is used for physical activity. Purpose: The purposes of this study were to explore the psychosocial and environmental determinants of physical activity, and to examine the influence of wearing pedometers on the hypothesized determinants (physical activity self-efficacy, physical activity enjoyment, …

An Inter-Domain Supervision Framework For Collaborative Clustering Of Data With Mixed Types., Artur Abdullin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We propose an Inter-Domain Supervision (IDS) clustering framework to discover clusters within diverse data formats, mixed-type attributes and different sources of data. This approach can be used for combined clustering of diverse representations of the data, in particular where data comes from different sources, some of which may be unreliable or uncertain, or for exploiting optional external concept set labels to guide the clustering of the main data set in its original domain. We additionally take into account possible incompatibilities in the data via an automated inter-domain compatibility analysis. Our results in clustering real data sets with mixed numerical, categorical, …

Dispersion Of A Solute In Hartmann Two-Fluid Flow Between Two Parallel Plates, J. P. Kumar, J. C. Umavathi

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

The paper presents an analytical solution for the dispersion of a solute in a conducting immiscible fluid flowing between two parallel plates in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. The fluids in both the regions are incompressible, electrically conducting and the transport properties are assumed to be constant. The channel walls are assumed to be electrically insulating. Separate solutions for each fluid are obtained and these solutions are matched at the interface using suitable matching conditions. The results are tabulated for various values of viscosity ratio, pressure gradient and Hartman number on the effective Taylor dispersion coefficient and volumetric …

Procedural Design And Terror Victim Compensation, Janet Cooper Alexander

DePaul Law Review

No abstract provided.